Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/268

 Would not even Jill have seen that this was not a mere malignant liar, he wondered, as he stood there, silent, before her. Jill's face, with the closed eyes and burning cheeks, drifted across his mind. She had shut out the hateful vision he put before her; the vision of the old lady telling what she had told; the vision of himself, believing. But Jill had not said it was not true. She had only said that if it were true it was in a way that he and Madame de Lamouderie could not understand. That it was true, true in any way, was enough to keep him safe. So his mind ran, while he stood and looked deeply down into the black and silver eyes.

'Yes. It's I. Jill has been very ill, you know.—Why shouldn't you see me again?' he said.

She made no reply to that, and though he paused, waiting for what she might find to say, nothing came. She only continued to fix her great eyes upon him with an infinite sadness.

'And how are you?' he asked; coldly, but with formal interest.

Even to this the old lady did not, for a moment, reply. Then, slowly shaking her head, she answered: 'As you see me.'

Graham had taken the chair opposite her on the hearth, and stretching up his arms he locked his hands behind his head. So he had sat the last time he had seen her; when she had told him and he had believed.

He was thinking of Marthe Ludérac now, his eyes